Family Goals

Eight Areas That Will Help You Set Goals

The Marketing Campaign For Your Life – Part 3

How we plan to promote what and who we are?
Do you set and document goals you have for your life and your family for the year?  If you haven’t, at the end of this year, plan to feel like you’ve failed, not accomplished much of anything this year.  In other words, does your life have goals for this year? Family goals are important because they identify what you and your family will spend its lifetime doing.  What will your family be known for? How will your family contribute to society? Think of the things your family needs or wishes to accomplish this year to get closer to what you wish to spend a lifetime doing.  I know thinking like this sounds foreign. It’s not foreign, but it is uncommon. It’s my job, my gift, to push you towards the uncommon because as I often say, ordinary is no longer enough.

The Thought or Concept:
Just like any business, you want to set goals, but not just goals for goal sake.  You want to set goals that matter to you as if your life depends on it because it does.  I’ve been in companies where everyone was required to have a set of goals. No one wanted to draft their goals and the goals they drafted, they had no interest in performing.  The only problem was this. They had to perform those undesirable goals because it was these goals that were used to evaluate the employees. I’ve learned and am sharing with you, never face goals with this mindset.  Rather take on this mindset of setting goals you want desperately to accomplish.

I remember sitting in senior leadership meetings when I worked in the telecommunications and media industries.  We’d sit around the table and create a handful or less goals that we all could be energized around. That’s exactly what you must do with your life and your family.  Find goals that energize you and goals that you think about daily.  

What can we do now to get closer to what we envision for our life, our family, our business?  This isn’t the stuff for ordinary people, but those who desire to be greater than average. Which are you?

The Practice:
Moving Forward This Year
We have eight areas that will help you set goals that will push your life, your home, your family forward for the year.  The Family Plan that we offer provides eight departments that are perfect for creating goals.  Let’s discuss them all and give a few examples of goals for each. Keep in mind that these goals should align with your vision statement.

1. Executive Administration: Because this department focuses on the leadership of our lives and family, we must think of ways to improve or get more leadership to help direct us towards our destination.  An example goal would be to set a goal to be intentional with small groups. Start a small group of like-minded individuals who have similar dreams and higher aspirations and meet regularly.  If you have a group already, set a goal to have predetermined talking-points and questions you’d like to know more about and share them with your group.  
2. Finance: This one might be the easiest department for a person to set goals.  An example goal you might have is to create a monthly savings plan where you deposit funds to save for Christmas giving.  In addition to this goal, we implemented an account to handle birthday and Christmas gifts for family members. These giving opportunities come every year.  Why not have a plan for them? Start by setting just one financial goal for the year.
3. Facilities: If you don’t have a plan, it will take a toll on your home.  Home improvement needs to be apart of everyone’s plan otherwise your home will become ruins.  An example plan may be as simple as giving one of your bedrooms a makeover. We did this for our daughter’s room and it made a world of difference for our family.  It gave us all a project we could work on together as well as a way to improve our dwelling. Set a goal for your home that will inspire you to become a more cohesive family.
4. Office Administration: Your day to day activities are embodied with office administration.  What’s missing or what’s lacking? I like to ask myself what can we improve in how we do what we do as a family?  An example goal for this department could be to start a shared calendar for family shared events and load the calendar on everyone’s phone.  Everyone has something to contribute to the calendar no matter what age. Set a goal for your day to day activities.
5. Product(ion) and Development: No one can do what your family does.  It’s unique. So decide what you can produce as a family or improve what you all currently do.  Maybe your family makes inspirational t-shirts, you could have as a goal to design two new shirts for the year.  Our family creates content to share with the world. So our goal is to write another book this year. No matter what you do, set a goal for yourself to do something.
6. Marketing: How you present yourself is important and must have a plan.  Every plan starts with a goal. What goals do you have to change how you see yourself?  Each year our family has what we call a “Focus Statement” that helps us master one skill or area of improvement.  One of our focus statements was this “under commit, but over deliver.”  We wanted people to see us as people who come through on our promises. Set a marketing goal for your family today and change how people see you.
7. Human Resource: This one, too, is easy.  The focus here is on how we care for people including ourselves.  We create a plan for our vacations and what we plan to gain from those vacations.  An example goal maybe to take shorter trips so that your family can enjoy more vacations together.  How will you care for the people in your family this year? Set a human resource goal for the year and see how your family can become closer.
8. Legacy: Sidenote – we used to call this our legal & political department, but have since renamed it to “legacy.”  This department handles what we wish to have in the future and leave for our children and their children. An example goal would be to create a mock “will”.  In it think of things you’d like to leave your children and grandchildren that you don’t have yet. One of our goals was to draft our own obituaries, so that we can live up to the standards that we wish for people to say while we were on Earth.  What legacy do you wish you could leave? Set a legacy goal today that helps you reach this desire. 

Before any plan can be achieved, goals have to be set.  What can you accomplish within a set amount of time? And to add to it, there must be a plan for setting goals.  In everything we do, there must be a plan if you plan to succeed. No plan means we plan to fail which is the default; it’s normal.

Today is Friday!
We’ve given you eight areas in which to make at least one goal for your year.  In fact, I don’t recommend having a goal for each area unless you have help completing your goals.  For beginners, take only one or two of the areas, set a goal, and execute. Build some confidence in creating goals and following through with action.  Lastly, remember, this is your life, the business of running your life, if you don’t run it well no one else will. 

Until next week, share, share, and share this message again and again.  If you’ve not already done so head over to Facebook or Twitter and follow us.  Thanks for visiting kerryaclark.com.

The Family Plan Binder is available soon.  Our team is working hard putting the finishing touches on our Family Plan binder that we’re making available to you.  We designed it to help you and your family move the needle forward making your life your business.  Find out more about the Family plan here.